A fundraising effort to support terminated Columbus Division of Police officer Adam Coy is currently ongoing among many Columbus police officers, asking 200 officers to give $20 a month to raise $4,000 a month.

The officer-initiated fundraiser is not for any legal fund, which the local Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) would take care of, but for Coy’s mortgage and other expenses, say several black officers who forwarded the above screenshot to the Free Press. There’s no policy within the Division against raising money for fellow officers.

The community is painfully aware of the double-standard Columbus police have towards black citizens, but black officers continue to tell the Free Press this also applies to how they can be treated as well.

“These officers don’t see that it was wrong (when officer Coy killed Andre Hill), even though the Chief called it out and they fired him. Now they’re rallying around him by giving him money,” said an anonymous black male Columbus police officer to the Free Press. “When they have a male-white officer who did something wrong towards a black male, they come to rally around them. But if it’s a black officer, they don’t rally around him.”

Another black officer said, “It shows how much they will go in mistreating the black community.”

This same officer added, “When a black male is shot unarmed by a Division of Police officer, and then they get all this love and support, this makes us black officers feel a certain type of way because we’re black. That could have been my son. But they are making it like he (Coy) didn’t do anything wrong. They are sending a message that you can shoot an unarmed black man and still get money from the male white FOP members.”

This isn’t the first officer-led fundraising effort supporting their own who used excessive force against a black male. Officer Zachary Rosen, who was fired in 2017 for stomping on black male suspect, also was the beneficiary of an in-house fundraising drive.

“They kept him afloat until he got his job back,” said a black officer.

The black officers are not certain if Chief Thomas Quinlan is aware of the fundraising text, as he’s not spoken to it. They are certain their own union, FOP Capital City Lodge 9, is aware though. The union, by the way, is demanding Coy’s termination go to arbitration, claiming there were several due process violations.

“This is a lose situation for us as black officers,” said another anonymous black officer. “There has not been any black officer, period, who has been fired and given money from other officers for support.”

This fund-raising effort is another example of how many elements in the Division are tone-deaf, brazen and insulting to the community they are sworn and paid to serve and protect.

“These officers believe police officers are always right for the most part. It falls into the bigger narrative how the black male is always looked as, as the criminal,” said the black officer.